BODY*LANGUAGE is a live collaborative practice/experiment for writers to learn to respond to movement and dance, and for dancers and choreographers to respond to writing & text in real-time. Facilitated by Marvin K. White and José Navarrete (with special guest dancers and choreographers).

As culture makers and culture keepers, whose work span many disciplines, José Navarrete and Marvin K. White are creating a “third space” where dancers and writers can come together to discover new written language and new body language to bring into their work. In these times of shrinking resources and shrinking spaces to dream and create, the imperative is to collaborate and innovate new spaces, that are safe from speculators and capitalism. These workshops by design, disrupt notions of performance and writing, by allowing space for participants to “break it down”, to write and dance in real-time, what they are experiencing. We hope the rapid response time of the workshop will allow the writers to remember in more detail, and hold in closer inquiry, what is happening in the dance. The dancers also benefit from hearing the writers respond to their work, and not having to read about the audience response in a review, if ever.

Marvin K. White, MDiv, is currently the Artivist in Residence and part of the Arts Program Team at the Oakland Peace Center. He was the Public Theologian in Residence (’17-’18) at First Church Berkeley and a recent Yerba Buena Center for the Arts “Equity” Fellow (’16-’17). He is the author of four collections of poetry: Our Name Be Witness; Status; and the two Lammy-nominated collections last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. He is articulating a vision of social, prophetic and creative justice through his work as a poet, artist, teacher, collaborator, preacher, cake baker, and Facebook Statustician.

José Navarrete is a native of México City where he was first exposed to theater and dance, choreographing and performing in parks, hospitals, and children’s parties as a clown and dancer. He studied dance at the National Institute of Fine Arts in México, and has a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and M.F.A in Dance from Mills College. José is the recipient of a CHIME Across Borders fellowship with Ralph Lemon. Navarrete has taught dance and performance to youth and adults in Mexico, and in the San Francisco Bay Area at Berkeley High School, Marin Academy, Cal State East Bay, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has recently been named a U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellow and will be traveling to Tohoku, Japan in 2018. José currently curates and produces the Live Arts in Resistance (LAIR) initiative at Eastside Arts Alliance, which provides residencies and performing opportunities for artists of color in East Oakland.

Week 3 PRACTICES: Larry Arrington*January 21-25, 3:45-5:45pm

In this workshop we will weave pathways between Larry’s two obsessions, dance and astrology.

Larry Arrington is a dance-artist working in hybrids of idea and practice. Her work in dance (time/space/body/whole) pivots around a desire to orient towards the capacities in us all that can glimpse unseen and unutterable horizons. Her body is her life and her life is her work.

Open Source Forms is a multifaceted experiential practice of image based and hands on movement work that is designed to unlock patterns of holding as a means through which to un-trammel and liberate the moving dynamism and flexible embodied intelligence of its practitioners. It is transparent and intentional in its refusal to adopt traditional methods of dance pedagogy and instead place the individual, eccentric experience of each student at the center of the work. In this class, we posit and explore the political implications of a practice like OSF. The experience of an embodied self is constructed by social, systemic and often oppressive forces. If holding patterns are ways that oppression and trauma live in the body, then letting go of these patterns can allow us to recover our whole selves, our human brilliance, and our capacity to think clearly about a situation. In this workshop, Abby and Raha engage in a teaching conversation within and around OSF as a technique of potential liberation, while also holding it accountable to questions about access, practice, language, and aesthetics. Together as a class we engage in these questions as we practice and research the form as a means through which to access the marvelously powerful and unstoppable resources of our whole selves.

Raha Behnam is an Iranian-born, Canadian-raised, US-based artist; a first-generation immigrant to occupied Indigenous territory. She is the daughter of Persian cultural workers, Darab Behnam Shabahang and Mahvash Vatankhahi. Her performance work has been presented at Danspace Project (Food for Thought), The Wild Project (the CURRENT SESSIONS), the Knockdown Center (Sunday Service), Performance Studies international 2017 conference (Hamburg), FRESH Festival (San Francisco), and Figure One Gallery (Illinois). She has performed in the works of Abby Crain, Tino Seghal, and Jessie Young, as well as performed for Pearson/Widrig Dance Company, and DEVIATED THEATRE. Raha is concerned with systems and practices for collective healing, and engaged in liberation work through community-based counseling. She holds a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning and Bachelor’s degrees in Dance and Anthropology. She is currently working towards teacher certification in Open Source Forms (OSF) lead by Stephanie Skura and is an active member of Movement Research’s Artists of Color Council.

Abby Crain is a Houston Born, new England raised teacher, performer and dancemaker currently based in the California Bay Area. Teaching credits include Movement Research NYC, Mills College, NYU, Ponderosa Tanzland, Beloit College, Liverpool University, and an annual summer retreat with Sara Shelton Mann called Drop Your City Armor. She has performed extensively nationally and internationally primarily with Miguel Gutierrez (NYC) and Sara Shelton Mann (SF). Her own solo and collaborative work has been seen in places such as NYC, LA Portland, Berlin, Liverpool, Cork and Chicago. She was certified to teach OSF by Stephanie Skura in 2013 and has been teaching at the FRESH Festival since 2011. Her current work centers around non-human and ecological affinity, eco-somatic research, radical pedagogy, and unpacking her own cultural subjectivity. She has two children, ages 10 and 14.

Life… contradictions in movement. In the moment when there is no contradiction or movement, we die. How can we start a process and not just start it? How can we be willing to respond and not react? How can we expand our capacity to be preset and listen? How can we be one with the other and not one against the other?, How to avoid falling prisoners in the manners of a teacher?

OBJECTIVE

To generate a space where the students are responsible for their process and not just imitate forms. We are interested in creating spaces where body and mind work together transforming each other, where they become aware of the importance of a personal practice that makes visible the invisible and clarifies the impulses of a body that can be moved by space and others in a harmonious and integrated way. This workshop is designed for dancers, circus artists, actors, martial artists or anyone interested to explore and be curious

The body is a territory of encounter, dialogue, discovery, relationship.

We are territories to inhabit, we inhabit the other and together we form a platform, a mirror and a sustenance. During this practice, the members of the workshop will experience some of the body research that CL has developed over the last 25 years as part of her artistic and pedagogical vision.

Various dynamics will be explored in relation to the concept of “Practicing Body” and “Expressive Body”. Working from the flow and control of energy in floor work, through the use of principles such as: accumulation, expansion, sense of trajectory, multi-directional use of space, circularity and sense of community.

During the session a series of Japanese Haikus are used as a creative impulse of various improvisations; as well as exercises of free stroke on paper, related to the expression of the body through various means, in this case poetry and drawing.

The main focus is on the development of a present and integrated body configuration that invites a deep understanding of the individual and social body, strengthening the use of intuition, perception and connection. The movement is approached from the action as a generator of a body-territory.

Claudia Lavista – Dancer, choreographer, teacher and manager of diverse projects, she has received several National Dance Awards both as choreographer and performer. Since 1992 she co-directs Delfos contemporary dance company. CL has created more than 50 choreographic works that have been presented in four continents. She is the founder and co-leader of the Mazatlán Professional Dance School, considered as one of the most prestigious dance conservatories in Latin America. Since 2010, she is faculty member of the Bates Dance Festival. In 2008 she joined the National System of Art Creators and in 2011 the University of Chicago awarded him a Mellon Fellowship. Her videodance “Entre paredes de agua” wins the Donna et Cinema Award for the Best Video Creation in Spain 2012. She continuously gives master classes and workshops and creates work with several organizations around the world. Since 2012 she directs the Platform for choreographic creation “Interactions, bodies in dialogue”. She is interested in collaborative, community and interdisciplinary projects.

Exploring how we work individually and also collaborate with a greater village with each person’s own background and current existence, join master teacher Kim Epifano in a process of self-excavation, awareness and reckoning. Epifano will guide an investigation of abstract storytelling. Incorporating improvisational physical action, imagery, essence, guts, contact improvisation, vocalization and theater. With depth, honesty, integrity we will support one another with a deep sense of imagination, curiosity and healing. Please bring knee pads, journal and something to write with. *One object that represents family to you!

A workshop about how to be on stage, and what to do with your hands. And your eyes. A workshop for dancers, wannabe queens, and anyone who walks across stages. Fauxnique and Vivvy have culled performance technique and theory from years of drag performance and stage time. In this workshop we practice performance technique to: enhance embodied presence on stage, consider impulses from the imagination, lip sync with your elbows, become your own spotlight. The class ends with a 2.5 hour LIVE IN PERSON simultaneous makeup tutorial performance by Vivvy and Fauxnique.

Monique Jenkinson is Fauxnique. She performs in a variety of contexts locally, nationally and internationally, most recently in her feminist cabaret show The F Word at ART/Harvard and her most recent work Girl (a collaboration with Marc Kate) at Joe Goode Annex. She is writing a drag memoir for Amethyst Editions/Feminist Press.

Mica Sigourney is VivvyAnne ForeverMORE!- co-owner of the Stud Bar and hostess of Vivvy’s Grand Opening and FACES. S/he performs and makes works in Sweden, Ireland and SF mostly. Check out micasigourney.com or vivvys.com for more info. She’s great at weddings.

Magic involves poetic and embodied action in a ritualized context to influence both consciousness and material realities. The pretend influences the real. Working with dancing, somatics, tarot, and spell crafting we will create a laboratory of activist magic. How can bodies and imaginations be decolonized and liberated? How can dancing respond to anxiety and trauma? Wicca, activist San Francisco rituals, and cross-cultural indigeneity influence this working.

Keith Hennessy dances. His performances engage improvisation, ritual, collaboration, and street protest as tools for responding to political issues. He observes self and society using a queer-feminist approach to critical whiteness. Hennessy directs Circo Zero and was a member of Contraband with Sara Shelton Mann. MFA, PhD from UC/Davis. www.circozero.org

Chi Cultivation and Research. Basic structures of technical improvisation followed by compositional puzzles constructed from conversations. Dance, write, and compose Declutter and restructure. It will be fun. You will get to explore from your own perspective puzzle solving. Find a voice and run with it. Love it.

Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, and teacher since 1967. She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in New York City before moving to Canada where she met Andrew Harwood and fell in love with contact improvisation. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco and founded Mixed Bag Productions, for which she has continuously served as artistic director. One of its early manifestations was the company Contraband, launched as a performance group and research ground combining the principles of contact, systems of the body and spiritual practice into a unified system of research. Among her awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 6 Isadora Duncan Awards, Djerassi Artist in Residence Awards, Headlands Center for the Arts Residency 2016, Lifetime Achievement Bay Guardian Award, 10 Women Who Made a Difference, Bay Guardian “Goldie” Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016) and special achievement award “erasing time”: celebrating 30 years a radical dance legend, ( Sara Shelton Mann with David Szlasa and Norman Rutherford) Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in consciousness. www.sarasheltonmann.org .